"If History without Chronology is dark and confused, Chronology
without History is dry and insipid." - Abiel Holmes.

The Beginnings - A rich association has existed between people and roots throughout the centuries
and before the development of "civilized" societies. This relationship was most
often one of dependence on found roots as a source of food, then medicine.
Sometimes because of their appearance, colour, odour or actual (or perceived)
medicinal properties roots were given a special importance by ancient peoples.
In the case of carrots it was the reverse and they were initially used for the
medicinal properties of their seeds.

The Wild carrots have been present and used by Europeans since prehistoric
times, but the garden carrot was unknown in Europe until the later Middle Ages.
The Wild Carrot is the progenitor (wild ancestor) of the domestic carrot. It is
clear that the Wild Carrot and Domestic Carrot are the same species but
Botanists have failed to develop an edible vegetable from the wild root and when
cultivation of garden carrots lapses a few generations, it reverts to its
ancestral type. In 1866 French botanist M Vilmorin claimed to have produced a
viable, cultivated carrot from wild plants in four generations. The experiment
was never repeated and it is thought that the "wild" plants used had previously
been hybridised in nature with cultivated carrots. (Banga 1957) Read more
here.

To unravel the long history of the Carrot you have to go back
a very long way. Fossil pollen from the Eocene period (55 to 34 million years
ago) has been identified as belonging to the Apiaceae family (the carrot family).
It is considered that the carrot dates back about 5,000
years ago when the root was found to be growing in the area now known as
Afghanistan. It is said that
Temple drawings from Egypt in 2000 BC show a carrot shaped plant, which
some Egyptologists believe could have been a purple carrot. Although Egyptian
papyruses containing information about treatments with seeds from plants were found in
pharaoh crypts there is no direct or documentary reference to carrot.

A domesticated carrot seed is virtually indistinguishable from a wild carrot
seed and will not tell how the root was shaped or even its colour.
Unfortunately, seeds are mostly what one has to work with from ancient or
medieval sites.

Wild carrot is more in evidence than cultivated
carrots in classical sources. They had edible leaves and thin, strong
tasting white roots which were prescribed for medicinal purposes. Names
include Greek keras, staphylinos agrios, daukos and Latin
daucus, pastinaca rustica. According to Pliny (Roman historian) and Dioscorides
(a pharmacologist in Rome) these
had aphrodisiac properties. (References:Dioscorides MM 3,35;Pliny NH
19,89, also 20.30-2 citing ‘Orpheus’, also 25.110-12;Galen SF 12.129)

An early form of carrot began to be cultivated in the
last few centuries BCE. It is first mentioned in the 3rd
century BCE by Diphilus of Siphnos. It was claimed to be diuretic; it was also juicier
and more digestible than the parsnip. This carrot was not red (or orange),
it was whitish and understandably confused with parsnip as the same plant.
The “redness” feature is thought to have emerged in varieties developed in
post classical times, after hybridisation with a central Asian species in
the early Middle ages. The first European author who mentions red and
yellow carrots is the Byzantine dietician Simeon Seth, in the 11th
century.

Carrots and Parsnips -
Historians believe the ancient Greeks and Romans cultivated carrots, they are
mentioned by Pliny the Elder and were prized by the Emperor Tiberius. However
most ancient writings from Asia Minor, Greece and Rome do not mention carrots
specifically,
even though wild carrots have a long history of presumed medicinal use. Parsnip
is often mentioned in the writings and often the words for parsnip and carrot
were initially interchangeable. In classical writings both vegetables seem to
have been sometimes called
pastinaca yet each vegetable appears to be well under cultivation in
Roman times.

Throughout the Classical Period and the Middle Ages writers constantly confused
carrots and parsnips and often treated them as the same plant. This may seem odd given that the average
modern carrot is about
seven inches long and bright orange while a parsnip is off white, usually fatter and can grow
up to 3
feet, but this distinction was much less obvious as carrots were also an off white
colour (or purple) during these periods before early modern plant
breeders got to work. It is thought that the orange carrot was not developed and
stabilised until the 1500's, probably in the Low Countries. Its original colour varied between
dirty white and pinkish purple. Both vegetables have also got much fatter and
fleshier in recent centuries, and parsnips may have been bred to be longer as
well. In other words early medieval carrots and parsnips were both thin and
woody and mostly of a vaguely whitish colour. This being the case, almost
everyone up to the early modern period can perhaps be forgiven for failing to
distinguish between the two, however frustrating this may be for the food
historian. (The Road to Domestication and the colour orange is
discussed here with some compelling images from way
before 1500).

The
plants were not confused on purpose, but since we have in many cases only the
written word, if the Medieval writer called plants "pastinaca", without
reference to colour in particular, it is impossible to know with certainty if they were carrots
or parsnips.

The word "carrot" was first recorded in English around 1530 and was borrowed
from Middle French carotte, itself from the late Latin carōta, from Greek καρωτόν
karōton, originally from the Indo-European root *ker- (horn), due to its
horn-like shape. In Old English, carrots (typically white at the time) were not
clearly distinguished from parsnips, the two being collectively called moru or
more (from Proto-Indo-European) *mork- "edible root", German for carrot is Möhre).
Various languages still use the same word for "carrot" as they do for "root";
e.g. in Dutch it is wortel.

Early beginnings -
It is
believed that the Carrot originated some 5000 years ago in Middle Asia around
Afghanistan, and slowly spread into the Mediterranean area. The first recorded carrots
(ad 900 Afghanistan)
were mainly purple or yellow, with some white or black - not orange. The Orange
colour, so familiar today, was not clearly mentioned until the 1500's although some interpretations
of early manuscripts and drawings therein, leave that possibility open.

Ancient Egypt -

There is no documentary or graphical evidence that the Egyptians had
knowledge and use of carrots (either seeds, roots or leaves).

Many history books claim that the Egyptians grew carrots. This "illustration"
from the Valley of the Nobles shows, or makes a guess, as to why previous
writers have made erroneous assumptions that they depict carrots.

The images depict items which on first inspection appear to look like modern
day carrots, There is however no documentary or other evidence that the
Egyptians cultivated carrots. The swollen taproot we know today did not appear
until probably the 9th C. To be able to grow carrots you need a climate and
environment that Egypt did not and does not have.

Temple drawings from Egypt in 2000 BC show a "carrot" shaped plant, which
some Egyptologists believe could be a purple carrot. Egyptian papyruses containing
information about treatments with seeds were
found in pharaoh crypts, but there is no direct reference to carrot. The Carrot Museum has
visited several tomb paintings in the Valleys of Luxor (ancient Thebes) and some
of the images are
compelling. It known that ancient Egyptians did use other members of the Apiaceae
(carrot)
family including anise, celery and coriander. None of these
plants would have been used as root crops, but were rather leaf, petiole or seed
crops for medicinal purposes.

Carrots are said to have been recognised as one of the plants in the garden of
the Egyptian king Merodach-Baladan in the eighth century B.C. There is no
documentary evidence for this and the clay tablet, held in British Museum, with
cuneiform inscription gives a list of plants in the garden of an earlier
Babylonian king, Marduk-apla-iddina, the Biblical Merodach-Baladan, who reigned
at Babylon in 721–710 and 703 BC.

It would probably have been placed
amongst the aromatic herbs along with fennel, suggesting that the root was
discounted, using only the pleasantly scented flowers and leaves in cooking. Merodach Baladan was the king of Babylon in 702 b.c., a Chaldean and father of
Nabopolassar and grandfather of Nebuchadnezzar.

The clay tablet is shown
here (British Museum). 67 plants are listed and appear in two columns,
subdivided into groups, perhaps to represent plant beds. Only 26 plant names
have been identified with certainty including leeks, onion garlic,
lettuce,radish, cucumber, gherkin, cardamom, caraway, dill, thyme, oregano,
fennel, coriander, cumin and fenugreek.Many remain to be identified. Carrot is currently
not amongst those identified, though some of the above identified are
umbellifers.

The exact lineage of carrots remains difficult to trace as it was often confused
by early horticulturalists who used the name "pastinaca" for either carrot or
the parsnip, its close relative.

Since most vegetables leave little archaeological
trace, it is difficult to construct a complete picture of what was grown
in prehistoric times. Many of those recorded in classical literature are
likely to have been grown in earlier times, and green and root vegetables
native to Europe were gathered long before they were brought into
cultivation.
Occasional discoveries of seeds show that cabbages were grown in southern
England in the Bronze Age and oil-seed rape, turnips, and carrots in the
Iron Age; celery, carrots, cabbages, and turnips were also among the
plants used by the Neolithic and Bronze Age inhabitants of the Swiss lake
villages.

Carrot seeds have been found in prehistoric Swiss lake dwellings in Ronbenhausen
giving clear evidence of human consumption. There is however no evidence of
cultivation at this stage, more likely they simply collected and used for medicinal purposes.
Similar findings appear also in ancient Glastonbury in the UK. Neolithic people savoured
the roots of the wild carrot for its sweet, succulent flavour.

One of the first written pieces of evidence come from
Theophrastus (371-287bc) - the father of botany. His two surviving botanical
works, Enquiry into Plants and On the Causes of Plants, were an important
influence on medieval science. Theophrastus states, in the ninth book of his
History of Plants, that "carrots grow in Arcadia, but that the best are
found in Sparta". Much of the information on the Greek plants may have come
from his own observations, as he is known to have travelled throughout Greece,
and to have had a botanical garden of his own; but the works also profit from
the reports on plants of Asia brought back from those who followed Alexander the
Great:

Theophrastus, also, mentions the carrot. Phaenias, in the fifth book of
his work On Plants, writes as follows: "With respect to the qualities of
its seed, the so called seps and the seed of the carrot." And in the first
book he says:"Umbelliferous types of seeded plants are found in anise,
fennel, carrot, bur-parsley (wild cabbage?), hemlock, coriander, and squill, which some
call mouse-bane."

(evidently
from a list of antidotes; carrot-seed is here mentioned as a cure for the
bite of the seps, a kind of lizard-snake. Nic. Ther. 843, Diosc. III.54 (59).

Archaeobotanists have discovered plant DNA in Greek-made pills
found in a shipwrecked merchant trading vessel dated to 130BDC. Archaeological researchers have started to analyse the drugs,
in the form of clay pills,
found on board. Using the GenBank genetic database as their guide, they have
found that the pills appear to contain carrot, parsley, radish, alfalfa,
chestnut, celery, wild onion, yarrow, oak, and cabbage.It is believed the plants were used by doctors to
treat intestinal disorders among the ship's crew. Such remedies are described in
ancient Greek texts, but this is the first time the medicines themselves have
been discovered. Read more here.

Geneticist Robert Fleischer of the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park
says that many of the ingredients match those described in ancient texts. Yarrow
was meant to slow blood coming from a wound, and carrot, as described by
Pedanius Dioscorides, a pharmacologist in Rome, was thought to ward off reptiles
and aid in conception. Read more here.

Early written references come from the early Romans.
Mithridates VI, King of Pontius (120bc-63bc) was in
constant fear of poisoning. The king is said to have taken a potion daily,
to render his body safe against danger from poison, this contained the seeds of
the Cretan carrot.

He concocted one of the most well-known antidotes in antiquity, called
mithridatium, possibly with the help of his court physician Crateuas.
Experimenting with different formulations and trying them out on condemned
prisoners, he compounded various antidotes to produce a single universal one,
which he hoped would protect him against any poison. A hundred years after the
death of Mithridates, Celsus (see below) recorded the
formulation, which comprised thirty-six ingredients, all of which are derived
from plants, except for honey to mix them and castor to enhance the aroma. The
concoction is estimated to have weighed approximately three pounds and to have
lasted for six months, taken daily in the amount the size of an almond. Celsus said "Against poisoning, a piece the size of an almond is given in
wine. In other affections an amount corresponding in size to an Egyptian bean is
sufficient. "

Krateuas (Crateuas) 120 B.C. was physician in ordinary to Mithridates VI
Eupator, King of Pontus (died 63 B.C.). Krateuas described and
illustrated plants. Some fragments of his writings have been recognised in the Anicia Codex of Dioscorides in the Vienna State Library to which reference has
been made later in the Carrot Museum - the first Orange carrot illustration.

An examination of the pharmacology of Mithridates' original formulation shows
a conscious effort to select plants thought to be useful, many of which have a
strong scent and are from the family Apiaceae: Cretan carrot, assafoetida
("gum"), galbanum, sagapenum, opopanax, parsley, anise, hartwort ("saxifrage").
They have subsequently been proved to reduce inflammation.

King Mithridates is said to have taken it daily in an attempt to render his
body safe against danger from poison. This worked, and when he tried to poison
himself (rather than be slain by his enemies through the sword) his suicide
attempt failed, as he had previously, over many years, dosed himself with his
"antidote".!!

Celsus was a Roman encyclopaedist, known for his medical
work, De Medicina, which is believed to be the only surviving section of a much
larger encyclopaedia. The De Medicina is a primary source on diet, pharmacy,
surgery and related fields, and it is one of the best sources concerning medical
knowledge in the Roman world. (read
the translation here). It is a disputed question whether the author of
the work was a practising physician or not. It may be remarked in passing that
in ancient times there was not such a sharp distinction between the professional
and the amateur as there is today. The amount of medical knowledge was not so
great as to be out of the range of an ordinary, educated man of average
intelligence. On the one hand, it may be said that a work so complete and so
accurate as the De Medicina must have come from the pen of a man with
professional experience. On the other hand, several reasons may be urged
making the other view more probable.

The seeds of
Daucus Creticus; Athaminta
Gretensis, Cretan or Candy carrot is mentioned in an ingredient of an
antidote,( II. 56). It also included, amongst other things, poppy,
parsley, pepper, acacia and saxifrage. The ingredients were pounded and
taken up in honey.

"Against
poisoning, a piece the size of an almond is given in wine. In other affections
an amount corresponding in size to an Egyptian bean is sufficient."

When King Mithridates was defeated by the Romans they
acquired
the recipe for Antidotum Mithridates, a universal antidote created by
Mithridates himself. Emperor Nero let his physician Andromachus study the
antidote. Andromachus changed a few ingredients, most importantly he added snake
flesh and increased the amount of opium. The antidote got the name Theriac
derived from the Greek which means 'wild or venomous animal', it is also called
triacle (modern day treacle). It was originally concocted to cure snake bites,
later it became an antidote for all poisons. Theriac had a very complicated
formula and failure to follow the recipe with fresh and precisely measured
ingredients meant that the concoction did not work.

The use of carrot seeds is
recorded in the famous work "De medicina" by Aulus Cornelius
Celsus written between 25bc-50ce . A
carrot poultice was used at the time - see modern
version here.

During the first century, the Greeks cultivated a variety of root crops that
included leeks, onions, radishes, turnips, and a poorly developed variety of
carrots. The unpleasant tasting carrots were rarely eaten but were applied
medicinally. Though the Greeks excelled in cultivating many food plants, they
never succeeded in developing the carrot into a flavourful vegetable.
Even Galen, the 2nd century physician at the court of Marcus Aurelius, stated
that the wild carrot is less fit to be eaten than the cultivated variety. They
cultivated carrots in their kitchen gardens. These varieties are thought to have
been 'forked' with white roots, not unlike the roots of today's wild carrot.

The Romans often ate carrots raw, dressed in oil, salt and vinegar or they
cooked them with a sauce made from cumin, salt, old wine and oil. The Romans
invading Britain in the second century AD brought leeks, onions, garden carrots,
garlic, fennel, mint, thyme, parsley and coriander to name but a few. The Greeks
called the carrot "Philtron" and used it as a love medicine to make men more
ardent and women more yielding. The Carrot is mentioned by Greek and Latin
writers under various names however it was not always distinguished from the
Parsnip and Skirret, which are closely allied to it. The name Pastinace was used
for both at the time of Pliny the Elder and is based on the verb pastinare - to
dig up. Galen in the 2nd century attempted to distinguish the two by giving the
wild carrot the name Daucus Pastinaca.

The Greeks had three words each of which could be applied to the properties of
the carrot: "Sisaron", first occurring in the writings of Epicharmus, a comic
poet (500 B.C.); "Staphylinos", used by Hippocrates (430 B.C.) and "Elaphoboscum",
used by Dioscorides (first century AD).

Hippocrates (460-359 BC)
The physician and scholar is well known and revered as the father
of modern medicine and formalised many herbal cures. Less known is the stress he
placed on diet in maintaining health. In medical science, people basically
thought the mind and the body was an inseparable thing and the moral view of
disease was that diseases were a punishment for a sin. On the other hand
Hippocrates saw that diseases occur by natural causes. Having lived just shy of
a century at a time when life expectancies were much less, he clearly understood
the importance of a healthy diet.

The assertion of Hippocrates, a doctor from Cos Island in Greece and that of his
followers remains and his complete works have commanded universal admiration for
a long time as the highest scriptures in the field of medical science. Even
today the sublime spirit of Hippocrates serves as pattern for others, so every
person seeking for the occupation of doctor is bound to swear the Hypocratical
oath at least once.

Hippocrates said "Let food be your medicine and medicine your food". In the
following description of cooking methods, his primary concern is to counteract
the potentially harmful effects of strongly flavoured foods with the ultimate
goal of easing their digestion and passage through the body. He also reveals
some of the basic preferences of ancient Greek cuisine.

He also said
"The powers of foods severally ought to be diminished or increased in the
following way...Take away their power from strong foods by boiling and cooling
many times; remove moisture from moist things by grilling and roasting them;
soak and moisten dry things, soak and boil salt things, bitter and sharp things
mix with sweet, and astringent things mix with oily."
For example, foods like cabbage, carrots and turnips were boiled several times,
fish or lamb would have been grilled, and an herb like sorrel would have been
dressed with oil.

Socrates - In 399
B.C., Socrates was found guilty of heresy and corrupting the minds of
Athenian youth. For this, he was sentenced to death by drinking poison hemlock.
The alkaloids found within poison hemlock cause paralysis of several organs,
including the respiratory system, usually within 2 or 3 hours. Eating only a
tiny bit of the toxins found in poison hemlock can cause death.

Pedianos Dioskourides, also known as Pedanius
Dioscorides, probably lived between 40CE and 90CE in the time of the
Roman Emperors Nero and Vespasian. A Cilician Greek, he was born in Anazarbos
(now Nazarba, near Tarsus) within the Roman Empire of the day, and today in
Turkey. A learned physician, he practiced medicine as an army doctor, and saw
service with the Roman legions in Greece, Italy, Asia Minor, and Provence in
modern-day France. His military years provided opportunities for studying
diseases, collecting and identifying medicinal plants, and discovering other
healing materials. Dioscorides compiled his medical treatise at the suggestion
of a fellow-physician, Areius. He had access to the library at Alexandria, and
may have studied at Tarsus. He recorded many plants previously unknown to Greek
and Roman physicians, and made an effort to describe not only their qualities
and remedial effects, but also something of their botany and living morphology
including roots, foliage, and sometimes flowers. Although not as naive as many
other herbal writers, he showed little scientific interest concentrating rather
on the practical uses of plants and sometimes giving only brief descriptions,
perhaps from other primary sources. In all he described some one thousand
remedies using approximately six hundred plants and plant products.

Dioscorides probably wrote his great herbal in about 64CE (according to
Pritzel 77CE). These medicinal and alimentary plants number about a hundred more
than all those (medicinal or not) known to the great botanist Theophrastus, and
described in his fine botanical work, the Enquiry into Plants, some two
centuries before.

Dioscorides wrote:

"Ye root ye thickness of a finger, a span long, sweet-smelling, edible being
sodden [boiled]. Of this ye seed being drank...and it is good for ye [painful
discharge of urine] in potions, and for ye bitings and strokes of venomous
beasts; they say also, that they which take it before hand shall take no wrong
of wilde beasts. It cooperates also to conception, and it also being [diuretic],
both provoketh [poison], and being applied; but the leaves being beaten small
with honey, and laid on, doth cleanse rapidly spreading destructive ulceration
of soft tissues." (Mitch, 1998)

Columella (1st century AD) briefly mentions the
carrot. He talks of the wild field parsnip and a cultivated variety which bears the
name and which the Greeks called "staphylinos". Carrot (pastinaca) a
native plant improved by cultivation - “agrestis pastinaca et eiusdem nominis
edomita quam Gracci staphylinos oucant (later it was called carota and
pastinaca transferred to the parsnip) Ref:Columella DA 11.3.35
- Food in the Ancient World from A to Z By Andrew Dalby)

He also mentions that the
unopened flowers were collected and stored as herbs. Columella, Lucius Junius
Moderatus - (b. 1st century AD, Gades, Spain) was a Roman soldier and farmer who
wrote a twelve volume treatise on all aspects of Roman farming and extensively
on agriculture and kindred subjects in the hope of arousing a love for farming
and a simple life. He became in early life a tribune of the legion stationed in
Syria, but neither an army career nor the law attracted him, and he took up
farming in Italy.

Tiberius Claudius Nero (42BC-37AD), second Emperor
of Rome, was, according to Pliny the Elder, so much in love with the
carrot root that he ordered it to be brought yearly from the Castle of Geluba
standing on the river Rhine in Germany. Pliny the Elder called him tristissimus
hominum, "the gloomiest of men".

Apicius Czclius, (ad 14-37) a wealthy Roman merchant
of the reign of Tiberius, whose real name was Marcus Gavio, was the greatest
expert of gastronomy in antiquity and devoted his life and own money to the art
of cooking. He taught haute cuisine under Augustus and Tiberius and enjoyed the
reputation of a wealthy and decadent gourmet.

Stories of his legendary wealth and excesses
abounded and he passed in to history as a kind of croesus of the kitchen.
Apicius is primarily remembered as a deranged, sadistic and extravagant
tyrant. The historian Aelius Lampridius depicts him feasting on
flamingo's' brains, the heads of parrots, sow's udder and vegetables
seasoned with precious jewels. #His work "De Re Coquinaria" (on cookery)
is the most important cooking treatise in Latin. It is divided into 11
Chapters and reveals the evolution of taste in terms of food and lifestyle
of the Roman upper class up to the Fall of the Roman Empire. This work is
reputedly the oldest cookbook in the world and captures for all time the
essence of what was best in the art of Roman cooking. Chapter III of
Apicius' book was "The Gardener - Cepuros - Vegetables". This chapter
describes meals eaten across civilised Europe during the centuries of
Roman domination. They constitute the foundations of western cookery,
shorn of food additives and artificial preservatives.

These recipes specifically include carrots:

1. Caroetae Frictea: oenogaro inferuntur - which
was fried carrots served with oenogerum.

- Boil the carrots and chop. Cook in cumin sauce with
a little oil and serve - for those who have colic.

4. Carotae et Pastinacae (Carrots and Parsnips) -
carrots and or parsnips fried in a white wine sauce. Presumably the vegetable(s)
are fried first, and then served with the sauce. An important note here that
carrots of the Roman time were NOT orange in colour. This colour wasn't
developed until around the 15th-16th centuries. The correct colours for carrots
in Roman times were white or purple.

Interestingly several of the Apicius recipes are very poisonous and should not
be re-created!!
Find out more here.
His recipes rarely included any indication of quantities, and ingredients were
often enumerated without any direction on how they should be used. This means
that his books were probably only used by experienced cooks. One tip in this
Book is "How to cook all vegetables the colour of emeralds is to cook them with
soda".

NOTE: The name of the Roman gourmand Apicius is commonly associated with the
oldest surviving cookbook, De re coquinaria (On Culinary Art), however, the
recipes were not put down on paper until 200 a.d., fully three centuries after
the man himself lived.

Caseggiato del Termopolio, Rome, Italy - Roman tavern
wall painting

Regio I - Insula II - Caseggiato del Termopolio (The House of the Bar).
Trajanic-Hadrianic period 98-138

Detail of the painting on the east wall of room 6, Ostia Antica, Italy is what appears to be a carrot, accompanying
olives and a little bowl of dip, from a wall painting in a Roman tavern in Ostia
(Lazio, Italy) (Caseggiato del Termopolio). Compliments of Bill Thayer (Lacus
Curtius) the real expert on Roman antiquities. The so called Thermopolium, in the Caseggiato del
Termopolio, in reality a tavern of the 3rd century.

This Roman Mosaic (below- right close up
detail) from the City of Thysdrus, Tunisia (modern day El Djem). This
Nilotic mosaic shows a naked man with two vegetables (thought to be
carrots or parsnips - leaves look like parsnip!!) from Djem, Tunisia. It
served as the center of olive oil production in the province of Africa
proconsularis.

In Roman times more civilized early Mediterranean communities
knew about the carrot and supplies were specially imported from Germany for the
table of Tiberius. The Romans often ate carrots raw, dressed in oil, salt and
vinegar or they cooked them with a sauce made from cumin, salt, old wine and
oil. The Romans invading Britain in the second century AD brought leeks, onions,
garden carrots, garlic, fennel, mint, thyme, parsley and coriander to name but a
few. Roman soups could be quite complicated affairs. Perhaps the oldest
surviving soup recipe in the world appears in Apicius' fourth century cook book,
based on the notes of a cook who had died three centuries earlier. The soup in
question is Pultes Iulianae, or Julian Pottage, and the recipe is as follows:

First prepare a wheat gruel by boiling up some pre-soaked wheat with water and a
little olive oil, and stir vigorously to thicken. Then pound up half a pound of
minced meat in a mortar, with two brains, some pepper, lovage and fennel seed,
and add wine and liquamen (fermented fish sauce, a little like modern South East
Asian versions). Cook the mixture in a metal vessel, add some stock, and add the
result to the wheat gruel.

The Romans transported and stored their liquids, including their much prized
wine and oil (for cooking carrots) in vessels called amphorae. These were large,
two-handled pottery jugs often in red brown sandy ware. (The word amphora is
Greek for "two ears".) In Roman times the amphora was used as a unit of liquid
measure containing 2 urnae, 8 congii, or 48 sextarii (the latter, equivalent to
a pint). One amphora thus equalled about 6 gallons or 24 litres. The amphora was
also used as a measurement of ship tonnage, equivalent to 80 Roman pounds.
Literally millions of pottery amphorae were used in commerce throughout the
empire. Vessels and shards of Roman amphorae, commonly found at archaeology
sites, thus serve as a ready means of tracing the spread of the wine trade in
and beyond the empire (for example, in Britain and Gaul prior to Caesar).
Interestingly enough one amphora is called the carrot amphora because of its
shape!.

The lower class Romans (plebeians) might have a dinner of
porridge made of vegetables, or, when they could afford it, fish, bread, olives,
and wine, and meat on occasions.

Apicius was the classical glutton, his colossal banquets
eventually drove him to bankruptcy
and suicide, but he left behind a cookbook so prized that it
has been preserved, in numerous editions, down to the 21st century. The Martial
Epigrams quote: "After you spent 60 million sesterces on your stomach, Apicius,
10 million remained. An embarrassment you said, fit only to satisfy mere hunger
and thirst. So your last and most expensive meal was poison. Apicius you never
were more a glutton than at the end."

The Latin word "sphondyli" has two meanings in the work of
Apicius. Sometimes it refers to carrots or artichokes and in others it refers to
mussels. The ancients cultivated the species "Heracleum Sphondylium" which is
the parsnip a similar plant to carrots.

Apicius wrote two cook books and a special book on sauces and
his name is linked to several culinary inventions.

Emperor Caligula (A.D.
37-51) a renowned crazed megalomaniac given to capricious cruelty and
harebrained schemes, including attempting to make his horse, Incitatus, a
consul. He is purported to have once ordered the senate to convene and then fed the entire
he assembled dignitaries a banquet only of carrot dishes, believing their
aphrodisiac powers would get people in the mood and produce a delightful
orgy for his viewing pleasure

The Roman emperor Caligula, believing these stories,
forced the whole Roman Senate to eat carrots so he could see them "in rut
like wild beasts."

Pliny
the Elder, (A.D.
23-79) a Roman Historian and scientist refers to a plant grown in Syria
resembling a parsnip, called in Italy Gallicam and in Greece Daucon.
Pliny's rich encyclopedia "Naturalis Historia" (Natural History) deals with
medicinal plants and described their therapeutic effects. Pliny's work includes
a discussion of all known cultivated crops and vegetables, as well as herbs and
remedies derived from them.

Pliny
said: "There is one kind of wild pastinaca which grows spontaneously; by the
Greeks it is known as staphylinos. Another kind is grown either from the
root transplanted or else from seed, the ground being dug to a very
considerable depth for the purpose. It begins to be fit for eating at the
end of the year, but it is still better at the end of two; even then,
however, it preserves its strong pungent flavour, which it is found
impossible to get rid of." In speaking of the medicinal virtue he adds "the
cultivated form has the same as the wild kind, though the latter is more
powerful, especially when grown in stony places. Pliny called its root "pasticana
gallica" : "food for Gauls", but it was not eaten as a vegetable prior to
the Middle Ages.

Pliny speaks of four kinds of wild carrot (Daucus), some of
which “grow everywhere on earthy hills and cross-paths” having “leaves like
those of coriander, a stem a cubit high and round heads”.

In Latin, pastinaca refers to the parsnip or the carrot.
Related words in that language are pastinare, 'to dig', and pastinum, a
two-pronged digging fork or dibble, which probably lent its name to these
vegetables because they so often formed forked roots in the ground. In archaic
English pastinate, means 'land prepared for planting'. Pliny also said "It has
become quite a common proverb that in wine there is truth."

Pliny died in A.D. 79 while observing the famous eruption of
Mount Vesuvius. In A.D. 77 he wrote the first encyclopaedia, Historia Naturalis,
in which he "set forth in detail all the contents of the entire world." . It was
composed of 37 books on natural history in all its phases including meteorology,
zoology, geography and botany. This work contains a large amount of information
found nowhere else. Headless people were among the many marvels it reported. He
reported that it involved 2000 volumes but if so, most have been lost. This work
had a profound influence on biology throughout the Middle Ages and practically
until the end of the 18th Century. In fact it was the basis for the
encyclopaedias of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Konrad of Megenberg and others.

The drawing of a Pompeii wall painting now destroyed (Pittore di Ercolano, vol 2, p52,pl8) depicts four bunches of vegetables. Helbig (1868, no 1669) identified a bunch of asparagus, various radishes, and two bunches of yellow Ruben (carrots).
(Source:The natural history of Pompeii -
By Wilhelmina Mary Feemster
Jashemski, Frederick Gustav Meyer). The leaves of Wild Carrot,
and many flowering umbels were found in the carbonised hay at Oplontis (a town
close to Pompeii).

Read an extract from a translation of Pliny's Natural
History here. Showing references to carrot and the remedies to bodily
ailments it recommends.

It is Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides
(c. 20-c. 70) who catalogued over 600 medicinal plant
species during his first century travels as a roman army doctor and who
accurately describes the modern carrot. The Greek herbal of Pedanios
Dioskurides, latinized as Pedanius Dioscorides (20–70 CE), is entitled Peri Ylis
Ialikis (PYI) and latinized as De Materia Medica, On Medical Matters, was
written about the year 65. It was destined to be one of the most famous books on
pharmacology and medicine but is also rich in horticulture. This non-illustrated
work contained descriptions of about 600 plants, 35 animal products, and 90
minerals emphasizing their medicinal uses.

The third book of
Dioscorides the Greek – Roots - sets out an account of roots, juices, herbs,
and seeds — suitable both for common use and for medications. Read more
on the next page including some translations of his work and illustrations of
the Orange Carrot. Here

He was from Anazarbus, a small town near
Tarsus in what is now south-central Turkey. As a surgeon and physician with the
Roman army of Emperor Nero, Dioscorides travelled through Italy, Gaul, Spain,
and North Africa, recording the existence and medicinal value of hundreds of
plants. He compiled an extensive listing of medicinal herbs and their virtues in
about 70 A.D. Originally written in Greek, Dioscorides' herbal was later
translated into Latin as De Materia Medica.

Dioscorides knew three kinds of Daucus, the third of which could be probably
identified with the wild carrot, having “coriander leaves, white flowers, top
and seeds similar to dill and terminal umbels like parsnip.”

It remained the standard reference
and authority on medicinal plants for over 1500 years. Dioscorides said that the
Greeks used carrot leaves against cancerous tumours. He may have learned his
medicine by practical experience while in the legions and he most certainly
relied on an earlier work by the physician Crateuas. His work describes some 600
plants and their possible medical use. Pedanius Dioscorides described the
carrot as a panacea for a number of problems. "They say that reptiles do not
harm people who have taken it in advance; it also aids conception," he wrote
around 60 AD.

Dioscorides wrote "Ye root ye thickness of a finger, a span
long, sweet-smelling, edible being sodden [boiled]. Of this ye seed being
drank...and it is good for ye [painful discharge of urine] in potions, and for
ye bitings and strokes of venomous beasts; they say also, that they which take
it before hand shall take no wrong of wilde beasts. It co-operates also to
conception, and it also being [diuretic], both provoketh [poison], and being
applied; but the leaves being beaten small with honey, and laid on, doth cleanse
rapidly spreading destructive ulceration of soft tissues." He recommended the
seeds of Wild Carrot for the relief of urinary retention, to stimulate
menstruation and to "wake up the genital virtue." Read more on
the next page including some translations of his work and illustrations of the
Orange Carrot. Here

Claudius Galen of Pergamum
(130-200?) was the most outstanding physician of antiquity after
Hippocrates. He served at the court of Marcus Aurelius. Galen's medical writings
(comprising nearly a hundred treatises) became the standard source of medical
knowledge for centuries. His experimental work was pioneering: he demonstrated
the function of the nervous system by cutting animals' spinal cords at different
points and observing their resulting paralysis. He was the first to consider the
diagnostic value of taking a subject's pulse, and was the first to identify
several muscles.

He also studied the heart and urinary system, and proved that
the arteries are full of blood. He believed that blood originated in the liver,
and sloshed back and forth through the body, passing through the heart, where it
was mixed with air, by pores in the septum. His anatomical studies on animals
and observations of how the human body functions dominated medical theory and
practice for 1400 years. Galen was born of Greek parents in Pergamum, Asia
Minor, which was then part of the Roman Empire.

A shrine to the healing god Asclepius was located in Pergamum,
and there young Galen observed how the medical techniques of the time were used
to treat the ill or wounded. He received his formal medical training in nearby
Smyrna and then travelled widely, gaining more medical knowledge. In about 161
he settled in Rome, where he became renowned for his skill as a physician, his
animal dissections, and his public lectures.

Galen commanded "garden Carrots higher to break the wind,
yet experience teacheth they breed it first, and we may thank nature for
expelling it. The seeds expel wind indeed and so mend what the root marreth".
The name Daucus pastinaca was given to the wild carrot by Galen in attempt to
distinguish it from parsnip. Galen said that the wild carrot "is less fit to be
eaten than the cultivated variety".

Extract from Galen on Food and Diet – Mark Grant (2000) -

Carrot, wild carrot and caraway The roots of these plants are eaten,
but these provide less nutrition than turnips and less in fact than the
taro from Cyrene. They are clearly heating and display a certain aromatic
quality. As with other roots they are difficult to digest. They are
diuretic and, if used excessively, supply an average amount of bad juice.
Caraway root contains better juices than the carrot. Some people call the
wild carrot daucus, since it is more diuretic, of greater medicinal value
and in need of lengthy cooking, if it is intended to be eaten.

The nutrition from the plants mentioned above

When forced through shortage of food, people often boil and eat
pellitory, water parsnip, alexanders, fennel, wild chervil, chicory, gum
succory, daucus gingidium, wild carrot, and the tender shoots of most
bushes and trees; some of these are even eaten when there is no shortage
of food, like the top of the date palm which is called the heart.

From the Collection Bertarelli, Milan Medicatrina, A Clinic Scene (left).

This illustration accompanying Galen’s work shows the surgical procedures
described by Galen--on the head, eye, leg, mouth, bladder and genitals--still
practiced in the 16th century.

The name Carota for the
garden Carrot is found first in the writings of Athenaeus (A.D. 200), and in the
book on cookery by Apicius Czclius. It was Galen the Greek physician
(second century A.D.) who named the wild carrot Daucus pastinaca (adding
the name Daucus) to distinguish the Carrot from the Parsnip, though confusion
remained steadfast until botanist Linnaeus set the record straight in the 18th
century with his system of plant classification.

The scientific name he gave the
carrot is Daucus carota, the parsnip Pastinaca sativa.

Although human dissections had fallen into disrepute, he
always stressed to his students the importance of practicing on humans and
recommended that students practice dissection as often as possible. Galen
believed everything in nature has a purpose, and that nature uses a single
object for more than one purpose whenever possible. He maintained that "the best
doctor is also a philosopher," and so advocated that medical students be
well-versed in philosophy, logic, physics, and ethics. To learn more about Galen
visit this site.

Galen also said "All that's old shall be new again." Galen was physician to the
Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. He remains most famous for his codification of
Hippocrates's 'four humors' as personality traits (a concept later adopted by
Adler in his 'Four Lifestyle Theory'). He was the first to identify the
brain-mind relation, the basic working structure of the eye and ear, as well as
distinguishing differences between motor and sensory nerves (i.e., so-called
affective and effective impulses). Did you know Galen is credited with
investigating increased physiological activity amongst lovers? The next time you
are near to your lover check to see whether your pulse races and pupils dilate!

Athenaeus, of Naucratis, Egypt, the garrulous
scholar from 200ad, considered the carrot and the parsnip the same vegetable or
at least interchangeable.
The problem of classification was finally resolved by the master classifier,
Linnaeus, who put the parsnip in a genus of its own, but refused to recognise
the cultivated carrot as specifically distinct from its wild cousin Queen Anne's
Lace. Both are known as Daucus Carota. His anthological work, the Deipnosophistae (Banquet of the Sophists), is a collection of anecdotes, after
dinner stories, memorabilia and excerpts from ancient writers whose works are
otherwise lost.

Athenaeus wrote:1. "A change of meat is often good, and
those who are wearied of common food take new pleasure in a novel meal," and
2. " Every investigation which is guided by principles of Nature fixes its
ultimate aim entirely on gratifying the stomach".

Extract of The Text of Athenaeus (referencing carrot)

Athenaeus, whose Deipnosophistae, or The Sophists at Dinner, is the
oldest cookery book that has come down to us, was a native of Naucratis in
Egypt. He lives in Rome at the end of the second and the beginning of the
third century after Christ. We know nothing more of his life and
activities than his own work reveals.

The Carrot.85 -

"This is pungent," says Diphilus, "harsh,
tolerably nourishing and fairly
wholesome, with a tendency to loosening and windiness, moderately good for
the stomach; not easy to digest,
very diuretic, . It is not without some influence in prompting men to
amatory feelings, calculated to rouse sexual desire; hence by some it is
called 'love-philtre.'

Numenius says in The Art of Angling:

Of the herbs and plants which grow in fields unsown
Or which take root in ploughed up fields
In Winter or when flowering Spring arrives
Such as the artichoke thistle (cardoon) dry or the wild carrot
Or the firm deep rooted rape-turnip or lastly the wild bur-parsley
(members of the carrot family)

Nicander in the second book of the Georgics says:

Among them too there is the deep root and high stalk of fennel, the
root of rock parsley and the scraggly carrot too. Which loves dry soils.

With them the soil thistle, the myrrh plant, sow thistle, the
hounds tongue and the chicory.
And with them thou shalt bruise or pound the pungent leaves of
edderwort , the tough hard tasted leaves of Arum or the plant/herb which farmers do entitle Birds Milk.

Diocles, in the first book of his Hygiene (or Treatise of the
Wholesomes), calls the carrot (staphylinus not astaphylinus. (It
appears he is trying to distinguish the parsnip from the carrot)
There is another kind - What is called the "sliced," which is a large, well-grown
carrot, is juicier than the carrot and more heating, more diuretic, wholesome,
very good for the stomach and easy to digest, as Diphilus records and
assures us.

It is said that the Roman invaders fed carrot broth to their female hostages in
hope of unfettering their straight-laced demeanor!

The breakdown of the Roman Empire resulted in social disturbances, destruction
of the large cities, and a general decline in culture, a period often referred
to as the Dark Ages. This is evidenced in the deterioration in the accuracy and
content of plant illustrations. Scribes continued to reproduce and embellish
previous manuscripts, rather than observing and representing the existing native
plants, and a dogmatic scholasticism that stifled original investigation.

The carrot was certainly cultivated in the Mediterranean area
before the Christian Era, but it was not important as a food until much later.
There is a long gap of about 900 years between the writings of the Greeks and
Romans of the first to third centuries and the next clear records about the
carrot.

Turn the pages of history to find out what happened next in the Carrot's journey
after the demise of the Roman Empire.